


Death-Crossed

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dementorlock, Depression, Happy Ending, Implied Past Child Abuse, M/M, No knowledge of Harry Potter needed to read this, Potterlock, Russian Translation Available, Suicidal Thoughts, Supporting Character Death, past John/Bill, stockholm syndrome (probably)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 14:31:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10573221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: Potterlock AU. In which John goes to the moors to die, and a dementor won’t let him.RUSSIAN TRANSLATION AVAILABLEHEREor onficbook





	

**Author's Note:**

> Finally get to post this now that 221bcon is happening =D This was originally written for the 2017 Sherlock Fanbook called "Twisted." 
> 
> This universe is one that is inspired by the HP universe. I take elements like dementors and put my own spin on things. HP canon technically does not apply. I hope you enjoy the story. Thank you for reading it.
> 
> While this story doesn't get graphic in details of child abuse, it does get heavy on depression and suicidal thought patterns based on my own experiences so if you need to stop reading this because it triggers you, that's totally cool. Your emotional well-being comes first.
> 
> RUSSIAN TRANSLATION AVAILABLE [ HERE ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11001909) or on [ on ficbook ](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5480195)

**Death-crossed**

** Part 1: Kiss **

Dementors, John thinks, must be the ragged wisps left behind when souls decide to die.

Hordes of them drift across the city, like clouds forgotten by the night. They lean over people’s corpses and seem to whisper against each corpse’s lips, sucking up scraps of dying light. They move so eerily silent, as if life cannot touch them.

John shivers when one drifts past, its tattered cloak-like form cutting jagged shadowy patterns in the air. He tries to lift his arm up, but he’s weighed down by dwindling blood.

 _Please,_ he thinks, as his breaths become soft puffs of fog. _Please god.._. He tries to embrace its cold. _Let me die._

But they pass him by, too eager to suck up flickering souls before the souls float away to the After. Funny, how teeming the sky is with lit up souls. Like stars, almost. A Milky Way to death. The dementors are like star eaters, extinguishing each light and soul with kisses of shadow.

They’re grotesquely gorgeous and awe-inspiring all at once, like they’re herding the light in the sky into their mouths. And John can’t look away.

Someone groans next to him and John turns his head. The dark wizard there says nothing, eyes long vacant. But the muggle, the _civilian_ who was just _there_ at the wrong time, moans. John sees blood dripping from his nose and mouth.

John doesn’t know what’s worse sometimes—blood dripping down from a friend’s face when they’re shot in the heart, or the cruel flash of green from an _Avada Kedevra_. Red or green. Glass, empty eyes staring back at him.

 _It’ll end soon,_ he thinks.

One dementor strays from the horde, swooping over to the moaning civilian to steal their last breaths. They would look like lovers, perhaps, if the dementor wasn’t made of shadow and fear.

If John closes his eyes, he can almost imagine the raspy screams that the soul makes, like the frantic skittering of centipedes trapped in jars. The dementor though… it doesn’t make a sound, per say. No, it _feels_ like the slow decay of rot shoved down your throat. It feels like snow silencing the earth in its attempts to muffle the earth’s voice every year.

Finally, though, the dementor lifts its head up from its latest corpse, and it drifts towards John. Its movements flicker in the silence, as if in a hurry to devour another soul. _Well,_ John thinks, _at least someone will get a use out of it._ He’d offer his withered soul on a platter if he could.

It leans over him and for a moment, John feels his heart pound at the sight of that alien mouth. The dementor’s face looks like a lamprey’s mouth stitched onto a skinned, eyeless human being. All rows of teeth and hunger without being able to feel a thing. But he finds himself smiling. Of course, _of course_ , this is what fear looks like.

 _Thank you,_ he thinks, as it hovers over his mouth and clamps its teeth over his lips, his soul.

_Good night._

***

Tap. Tap. Tap. John peeks up from his blanket and sees someone at the window, just their outline, covered by shadowy trees. The silhouetted branches crisscross over the figure like a shadowy cage of lace patterns.

John stares for a while, caught up in the details of the branches, until the tapping starts again.

“Mum?” he calls downstairs. “There’s one of those things at the window!”

“Well, don’t look at it, I’m still cooking! I’ll strengthen the light wards in a few ticks, luv,” she shouts back. “Just sit tight!”

Okay. John can wait. He sneaks another glance at the window, at the silhouette’s clawing hand skrit-scratching now at the window. He hides a shiver, tries not to think of bottles or fathers or screams, and ducks back under his blanket with his toy wand.

He’s a Watson. He can be brave.

Outside, five more join the one scratching at the window.

***

John tries to choke, to breathe, to fall, _anything,_ but the dementor’s lips (teeth, not-lips) only pull harder at something that John didn’t even know was _there,_ and it’s shining as dim as a dying flame, and John _aches_ but smiles, because yes, this is what he wants—

The dementor rips its teeth-lips away, shuddering like a tent about to collapse on itself. It wrangles its raw flesh hands towards John, almost to capture the lingering wisps that have returned to him, and John wants to help. But the light from his lips remains caught in his throat while the rest silently screeches, unable to escape the dementor’s mouth.

[ _My meal…_ ] John hears, no, _feels,_ a voice resonate in his bones, like the sawing of flesh. [ _It still lingers…_ ]

“Then… take it!” John chokes out, each word like another knife lodged in his lung. How far along must he be, to start imagining Dementors with voices?

The Dementor hovers for a moment, with the remaining wisps trailing between it and John like a spider’s thread. Then John feels nothing but pure cold, worse than he’s ever felt before, and the Dementor leans in once more to—

“ _No_ , god damn it, _no!_ Like _hell_ you’re gonna take him, _Expecto Patronus!_ ”

Fucking Harry bursts into the street with her lioness patronus leaping in front of her. Her lioness roars with screeching wavelengths of light blasting from its eyes and mouth. It’s like being pushed into the center of the sun. The Dementor almost hisses, [ _blasted light_ ,] before it tears away, joining the others in the sky.

 _Come back,_ John wants to plead, but his lips feel as heavy as his bled-out limbs.

Harry flies to his side, running diagnostic spells, slapping his face (she always did have shitty bedside manner, hence being an auror not a healer) and blasting back dementors. Her lioness seems to eat them all alive, spitting them back out into the foggy skies.

“You’re not going to die, John Hamish Watson, I won’t _let_ you,” she presses her wand to his chest.

For an ugly moment, so true and raw, the light stuck in John’s throat and the voice in his head murmur, [ _I hate you_.]

Harry stares at him, jaw clenched. “I hate you too.”

She apparates them both to Saint Mungo’s anyways.

***

“Remember. Don’t let go of my hand.”

John nods quickly. That’s easy enough. It’s impossible to let go with how tightly Mum grips his wrist. On her other side, Harry huffs.

“We _know_ , Mum. We do this every time! Now can we _go?_ I want to get some toffee from the shop!”

Their mother frowns. “Wouldn’t you prefer some chocolate instead, Harriet? Heaven knows we have enough to last us for a decade.”

Harry’s nose wrinkles. “If I have to eat another bar of chocolate again, I will throw it in the fire.”

“ _Harriet_.” Mum’s voice goes colder than the wandering things outside.

Normally, Harry would argue, but one look at Mum’s face and Harriet goes pale as snow. She shuffles a little bit away from Mum and nods.

“Right.” Mum’s grip digs into John’s skin. “Remember the rules. Don’t let go. Don’t stray. And stay close to me.”

She stares at the door, as if waiting for it to bleed, before she murmurs a spell to unlock it.

If Cold could be a person, John would imagine it walking through the door, changing everything it touches to ice. He clings to Mum’s arm, thinks of the time he nearly drowned in a swimming pool, of the time Dad left, of sitting alone at lunch and—

“ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” Mum whispers, her wand lighting up with the warmth of hugs and soft blankets.

A scribble of lights—like strings tangled together, or children’s doodles lit up in pure brightness—waddles out of her wand. It brushes past John’s shoulder, swirling around Harry and Mum too, before it leads the way out the door.

“Stay close,” Mum yanks him and Harry against her as she walks out the door.

Her hedgehog patronus rolls around in midair, bristling with wild stringy lights every time the horde of dementors comes near. Mum frowns at the dim shimmer that covers their home like a blanket. “I’ll have to strengthen the light wards later… remind me before we get home, Harriet.”

Harry, too preoccupied with glaring at the dementors and sweating rivers, doesn’t reply. She stands straight and tall, like fear cannot touch her, even as Mum’s hands tremble when she tugs them to the nearest light shelter.

The dementors seem almost beautiful, John thinks dimly, when they gather around the light wards, outlines touched with hazy moonlit glow.

Mum tugs him back into the light shelter, into the Knight bus.

The dementors can’t follow.

***

[ _Do we scare you?_ ] the voice resonates in his mind.

John jolts up, wand arm raised, ready to punch or cast or _both,_ anything to get the heavy weight off his chest. Something’s screaming, so loud and animalistic rammed in his skull and it takes John a moment to realize that it’s himself.

Dead. _Dead_. The dead are clinging to him. More bodies. Bill. Dad. He has to get them off, get them _off_ —

He tumbles out of the bed, buried in heavy white duvets. They feel like corpses. He almost chokes in soft cotton and fabric, bewildered by the rows of rigid beds and cabinets. There shouldn’t be so much white. So much souls gathered in the shape of beds. Dementors will come at any moment.

[ _Foolish_ ,] the voice resonates again.

“Get out of my _head!_ ” John roars again, slashing at nothing.

[ _No_ ,] the voice makes John think of the sound of bone-like chandeliers, clinking in a haunted house. [ _Your soul is ripe with nightmares._ ]

John whirls around. “Where are you?!” He feels the voice brush its dead fingers against his face. He feels Bill’s dead hand pressed against his neck. “No. No, please—”

“What was that?!”

A crash. Windows. But no, there are no windows, not where Bill is.

[ _Show me more_ ,] the voice beckons, and it feels like torn ribs digging into his arms.

“Let me _in_ , my brother’s in there!” John hears, and on cue, Harry bursts through the doors with her wand raised.

Are they fighting again? There’s always a war, in and off the battlefield— _such delectable morsels of dying flesh_ —

“John?” Her snarl thaws into a different kind of fierce and he wonders what her soul tastes like (no, fuck, no, no, no, no _get out_ —). “You shouldn’t be out of bed, you dolt!”

“I should be _dead_ ,” he chokes out, tries to bite his tongue, or rip open his wrists, anything to stop the screaming, the voices, his mother’s glassy eyes—

“Put him out,” a voice orders.

Pain gnaws into his head and the last thing John sees are Harry’s devastated eyes.

***

“The first spell every budding witch or wizard learns is the spark spell, the ability to send red or green sparks up at any moment of trouble.” Mum nods at the group of children gathered in her sitting room, all huddled on the carpet. “Can anyone tell me why?”

“Um,” a shy girl answers, “because it’s easiest?”

“Well, yes. But I’m looking for a more in-depth explanation,” Mum searches among the bored children, while adding more light to the fireplace. The fireplace roars in blue light, sending a blue glow throughout all the walls, before settling down again. “Harriet? How about you?”

Harry scowls from her game of tic-tac-toe with Clara. “Obviously so we can say _help us, help us, the dementors are coming_ , since we’re not allowed to learn any advanced light spells, duh.”

“Harriet.” Mum glares as the children snicker.

“What? It’s true! You never let us do anything! Heck, I’m older then all of these babies by three years! I’m going to Hogwarts this September and you won’t even let me learn one more light spell!”

“Harriet, you know why I can’t. You’re not re—”

“The world is being eaten by dementors, _no one’s ready!_ I heard that there’s only twenty members of the Light Castors for all of Britain and they can barely sustain the barrier for all of _London_ for longer than twenty-four hours at a time! I should be learning early! Then I can cast light spells for longer than them!”

“ _Harriet!_ ”

The room goes so still that John can hear the dementors wandering far off beyond their barrier. Only just softer than the darkest breeze.

Slowly, Harry stands up, never flinching from Mum’s stare.

“I know I’m right,” she says. “I won’t apologize.”

She marches straight to her room, with Clara following.

***

“Hello,” the next dream says to him. It’s not the voice this time, but a human woman. At least, she looks human. And maybe she’s not even a woman. Maybe John’s assuming things again. Imagining. “I’m Doctor Ella Thompson. I’m a Mind Healer.”

She smiles down at him. Her eyes are kind and too bright. It hurts to look at her.

“…It’s okay if you don’t want to talk. I’m here if you need anything. I’m here to _listen_ , John (I hope you don’t mind if I call you that, but you can correct me when you wish). Anything you say to me in these sessions is confidential. Not even your sister will know.”

[ _Don’t listen_ ,] the voice chides. [ _Nothing you say is ever a secret. I’m here, after all._ ]

“Are you even real?” John asks.

“Oh, John,” Ella says sympathetically, at the same time as the voice, “of course, I am.”

***

When the last of the parents come to pick up their child via floo, Mum falls back into her chair. “Oh, John, what am I going to do?” she buries her face in her hands.

John fidgets with his worn gloves. He hates it when Harry and Mum fight. They’re like two storms caged into one tiny house while John struggles not to be blown away. But…

“I… um… I think Harry’s right.”

Mum freezes.

“I… I don’t want to be scared, Mum.” He turns away because Watsons aren’t allowed to say that. Dad never let him say things like that.

Slowly, Mum creeps over and puts her arms around him. She feels like all the things he tries not to wish for.

“I’m sorry, luv,” she kisses his hair, “I don’t want to be scared either.”

They sit and pretend not to listen to the other cry.

***

[ _Your mother was a beautiful soul,_ ] the voice taunts. [ _I always wonder if human tears taste as tantalizing as their writhing hopes and dreams._ ]

“Shut up,” John spits out, wanting to blot his memories out with a knife or a wand, “shut up, shut up, shut up, you’re _not allowed to see that!_ ”

The healers have to stun him to sleep again.

***

Harry hides the cross-stitch pattern she’s been working on with Clara behind her back, when Mum and John come upstairs. Clara went home with her parents hours ago, but in these moments, John can always picture Clara silently taking Harry’s hand every time Harry looks ready to take the world by her teeth and tear it apart.

Mum always looks like she’s ready to brush away the world. But tonight, she hides her trembling hand around John’s.

“I don’t want any supper,” Harry scowls. “I’m busy practicing.”

“ _Harry_ ,” John frowns. “Mum just wants to—”

“It’s alright, John.”

Mum lets go of his hand and kneels beside Harry. They’re both so tense that John wonders if they’ll both shatter if the other touches them.

“…I thought about what you said, Harriet… and you’re right.” Harry gapes at her but Mum continues like she doesn’t notice. “There’s no harm in introducing another basic light spell at this age… the world keeps changing and, five years from now, who knows what magic young people like you will discover.”

“Then… you’ll… you’ll teach us magic? Both of us? John too?” Harry rocks back on her heels.

Mum hesitates, but opens her hands to beckon John forward. “Of course… Both of you.”

Harry grins, cuffing John around the shoulders to ruffle his hair. “You hear that, midget? You get to learn _real magic_ to blow away dementors! We’re going to be unstoppable! I won’t have to carry your stuffed dog around every time you want to hide in a corner!”

“ _Harriet_ ,” Mum groans. “Luv, let go of your brother. This kind of magic does not _‘blow away’_ Dementors, it merely banishes them temporarily, keeps them away from us. It does not exterminate them or physically harm them.”

“How do you know?”

Mum smiles at John. “We just do.”

“But…” John trails off. He hears them at night, even through the light barrier. They whisper in words that are not words. They hiss and they glide in a language that sounds like falling snow. He even hears them hiss every time the barrier pulses, like broken reeds in the fall.

“…Someday things might be different,” Mum slowly unfurls her fists. “Someday, a spellmaker may invent a charm to defeat them for good. But for now, we’ll have to make do with what they have. The basics. I want to show you how to do a Patronus Charm.”

Harry nearly knocks John over in her excitement. “Are you freaking serious?! That’s awesome! I wonder what animal my patronus will be?! A wolf? A tiger? John, you might get a dog! I can picture a dog for you, like Gladstone.”

John rubs his head numbly. “Very funny,” he grumbles, but truly, he wouldn’t mind a dog.

“What do we do, what do we do, oh, but we don’t have any wands—”

“You can borrow mine. Just for this occasion,” Mum adds sharply. “I trust you to be responsible with it.”

“We will! We _will!_ Cross our hearts,” Harry bows and John can’t help but snort and agree.

“Now, the incantation is the easy part. _Expecto Patronum_ ,” Mum flicks her wand, letting her hedgehog patronus waddle out and create lazy somersaults around Harry and John’s heads. “But the difficult part of the spell isn’t in the wand movements or the incantations… but the emotional energy you feed to the spell.”

John and Harry exchange confused glances.

“You must think of your happiest memory and let that fuel your spell. Otherwise, the patronus won’t work. At best, you might manage some light mist, but nothing substantial to truly protect you.”

“That’s easy!” Harry rolls her eyes. “We’ve got lots of happy memories!”

John nods along, though part of him wonders, _do we?_

“Luv, you’ve never had to be in proximity with a dementor without the barriers but it’s extremely difficult to think happy thoughts when they’re around. They sucks the happiness out of you. They make you relive your darkest memories, your fears and sorrows. They make you want to die.”

Even Harry stills at that thought.

“When you are near them, it’s very difficult to conjure a Patronus spell. Even the strongest spellcastors, who’ve created corporeal patronuses before, may revert and have difficult casting the spell again. It’s a constant battle of your very self that you must fight during every confrontation.”

John pictures it then—drowning in the muck of his dad throwing bottles, of mum stepping in front of him and Harry, of children laughing at him in school and shivers.

“Then I’ll always fight! I’ll keep fighting! I won’t let them kiss away my soul or _anyone’s_ soul. I’ll be a Light Castor just like you, Mum, except I won’t have kids and I’ll stay to strengthen the barriers and I’ll beat the dementors. I _will_.”

Mum’s eyes shimmer before she turns away and murmurs, “Perhaps you will…”

John frowns and looks down at his hands. Such small hands. “I can protect you too,” he says quietly.

Mum laughs and tugs them both close. “I know you will. Now,” she whispers in his ear, “Think of your happiest memory.”

***

[ _But you couldn’t, could you?_ ] the voice whispers almost gently in his ear. [ _You don’t know what happiness feels like,_ ] it muses in something almost like pity.

John doesn’t reply anymore.

He doesn’t even have the strength to cry.

***

Harry manages a somewhat corporeal patronus on her third try. It shimmers and it fades as it prowls around the bed, like a memory of the sea caught in a mirror’s sunny reflection. John never wants to look away from the small lion cub that tries to paw at his shoulder. It’s so _cute_ , if a creature bathed in moonlight can be described as such.

“I. Am. So. Awesome,” Harry pumps her fist. “I just thought of the first time Clara said she was my friend and _boom!_ I wonder if I can use the time John—”

“Very good, Harriet,” Mum hides her smile behind her hand. “But keep practicing. This is nothing compared to casting when a dementor is near. They feed on happiness, and happiness is hard to hang on to when all you remember is fear. John? How are you doing, luv?”

John fiddles with his sweater. “Um. I think I have a memory.” He tries to summon up the image of him and Mum hugging just minutes before they went to talk to Harry. That might work, right?

“Excellent. Now, if I could have my wand back, Harriet? Here you are, John. Give it a try.”

Mum’s wand feels warm against his hands. It hums in recognition but doesn’t feel quite _right_ but at least it doesn’t sting like Dad’s wand did long ago. _Protect_ , the wand seems to spark and John tries to relax his shoulders.

 _Think of something happy_. Mum hugging him as they cry. Harry kicking bullies that call him names. Dad leaving. That’s happy… right? (Right?)

“E-expecto pat-patronum!”

Warmth gushes through his being, pulling, taking, _stealing_ it from him and John, John suddenly thinks of Dad shouting stupefy right at his own son and John asking _why_ but, but, but—

The wand burns in his hands, sending out red fire instead.

“John!” Mum snatches up the wand, putting out the fire and wraps her arms around him. “John? Luv? Are you alright? _Are you alright?_ ”

He tries to blink away his tears.

“Yes,” he lies, though he sees Harry shake from the corner of his eye, “Y-yes, I’m f-fine.”

“You don’t have to do that again, I promise. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have forced you, I shouldn’t have—”

“I’m fine,” his voice cracks. _I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m finei’mfine—_

***

[ _John?_ ] the voice asks the next day. And the next. And the next. [ _Are you there?_ ]

He doesn’t answer.

***

“...Mum said that… that someone hurt you… a long time ago,” Harry sneaks into his room and sits on his covers. She doesn’t say who. They both know.

John curls up against Gladstone.

“And now… now it’s hard for you to do light spells.”

John brings the covers up over his head.

For a minute, he thinks Harry will yell or tickle him or roll her eyes like she always does. She’s a terrible listener and a terribly annoying sister. No wonder Dad loved her.

But then he feels something gentle touch his head.

“It’s okay. You don’t need to know them. I’ll learn all the spells you’ll need, Johnny,” her voice hitches, “…and I’ll protect you from now on. I _promise_.”

John shoots up, pushes her away. “I don’t need that! I’m not weak, I can make a patronus, one day, I _will—_ ”

“What if you hurt yourself?! I’m the big sister! It’s my job to take care of you!”

“I don’t need it!” he tries not to think of the day Dad left. Tries not to think of Mum trembling as she hugged him tight and murmured _I’ll protect you. From dementors and dark lords and **men like him** , I promise, John, next time, **I’ll protect you**_.

He throws a pillow at her and Harry storms out.

He won’t make people so sad that they have to protect him. He can think of a happy memory, he _can_ …

***

“…John? Are you there?” Is it the voice this time? Or the dream healer? Ella?

“…I don’t know what’s real anymore…” Oh. He wasn’t supposed to say that out loud, was he? He laughs and it sounds like dirt hitting a coffin. “It doesn’t matter…”

“John,” the dream healer steps through the curtains. “Do you know what day it is today?”

Today he tried to make a patronus and then Harry found out about Dad. Today he woke in the hospital and he dreamed there was a healer when there was nothing but voices and remnants of fog tugging on his soul.

A sigh. “You don’t have to talk… but… I brought you a book.”

Pages press against his hand.

“I heard from your sister that you used to be fascinated by dementors so I found some old research from an Unspeakable’s journal. Our secret. He lived before the dementors became a problem, you know, and then disappeared. Honestly, I think he got his soul kissed away by them. He’s a funny one. Most of his stuff’s been banned because he seems pretty flippant about the nature of dementors but I think you’ll like his sense of humour. _I_ think it’s funny, at least. Um, don’t tell my supervisor that.”

Fine. He even nods to the dream. He won’t be around long enough to tell anyone.

The dream-mind-healer Ella beams at him. “Then I’ll leave you to it!”

She doesn’t notice him swiping her keys and wand.

***

_Dementors are the most terrible things to walk the earth… they feed on positive emotions and in their presence, many beings relive their worst memories. Reactions to dementors vary depending on the severity of trauma in the victim’s life..._

_A Dementor’s kiss happens when a dementor locks lips with its victim and takes its soul, leaving a soulless husk…_

_No one knows how dementors came to be but there have been records of them for centuries…_

_In the last two centuries, dementor populations have grown so much that they are commonly seen scourging Europe and its residences like the common fly. Rather than prey on muggles, they seem oddly intent on magical souls…_

_Places of desolation like the moors in Great Britain seem to be their favourite haunting grounds…_

_Dementors feel no compassion or joy. They **will** hunt down any souls they find…_

_No one has successfully been able to communicate or parlay with a dementor._

John frowns at that particular textbook. He’s seen the dementors gather around outside his window, seen them trailing around the light barrier Mum keeps strengthening each hour. They gesture to each other sometimes, as if in conversation. Their whispers and hisses are hardly any sound at all, yet they seem to be snippets of _something_.

Maybe the right people haven’t tried to talk to them.

John almost laughs at himself. What moron would try to talk to a dementor though? They’d probably fall weak and kissed. Even the wizarding tales about children encountering dementors cast the dementors as villains.

They need to be banished away by happy thoughts.

John pulls out the wand he took from Mum’s bedside table and peers through the front door.

Pulsing and shimmering before him, is the light barrier.

John closes his eyes and breathes in and out.

It will be fine. If he stays behind the barrier, he can practice his patronus on real dementors. They won’t catch him in here. In here, he’s safe and not-sad. It’s not the same as happy, but it’s a start.

He creeps through the door and stands on the welcome mat that no one uses anymore. The barrier pulses as if to say _stay away_.

Dementors stare at him curiously, like exhibits in a zoo.

Carefully, John raises Mum’s wand. It thrums and hums in warning.

“…E-expecto Patronum!”

Pain hits, John sees his dad and bullies and Harry yelling at him and Mum crying and—

“What was that?! Where’s my wand?!”

John stumbles at the sound…

…And trips through the barrier.

***

[ _Where are you going?_ ] The voice seems surprised as John stumbles across the rows of beds. [ _You should be resting. Dreaming._ ]

John doesn’t answer, only fishing out not-Ella’s keys and inserting them into door.

[ _I want to know what happens when you trip through the barrier._ ]

“You don’t need to know,” John whispers. Though really, does it matter? The voice can have his dreams, his wants, his memories now. John doesn’t need them anymore.

He unlocks the door.

***

Hands. Things that look like hands are grabbing him, pulling him. John can’t think. He sees his dad in every breath. He sees _stupefly_ in every _thing_ that drags him away.

They seem to tug. To yank John back and forth. Are they.. .are they arguing? Like Mum and Dad used to argue when they thought he and Harry weren’t looking… Dad never bothered to hide it from him… _You have to be a man, a Watson, you have to endure this pain,_ Dad told him, _I’ll toughen you up—_

“John?! _John,_ where are you?!”

He can’t even scream. They’re so close. They’ll take away the pain…

“ _Let go of my son!_ ”

Like a dream, Mum suddenly appears before him, tearing through the circle of dementors and punches the one holding him in the face (hood?)

“M-mum?” John can barely believe she’s real. Dad’s still shouting in the back of his head.

“Luv, John, look at me, it’s going to be okay,” those flesh-picked hands reach to grab at him again, “it’s going to be okay, _no, don’t touch him!_ ”

She curls up around him. Shivering. They claw at her back, her skin and John whimpers, thinking, no, no, no, this is wrong.

He tries to find Mum’s wand—it must have dropped somewhere nearby—but all he can hear in one ear is his Dad and in the other, he hears his mum murmuring, no, no, no—

The last time he sees his mother, his _real_ mother (not the husk that lies in their living room, that they burned for the funeral) she’s swallowed by a swarm of dementors bringing their lips to hers.

***

[ _Incredible_ ,] the voice sounds like swarms of locusts falling into a hush.

John closes his eyes as he heads to the apparition point.

“…Are you feeling full yet? Is my mother’s death that entertaining to you?”

[ _No,_ ] the voice replies, soft and unfamiliar. [ _It’s not incredible that she died. Humans die every day. It’s natural. Normal. Ordinary._ ]

John’s throat feels dry. He lets himself apparate. Like stepping into another world, escaping infinity.

But he can’t escape the voice.

[ _What’s incredible,_ ] the voice grows deeper, [ _is that you survived._ ]

***

He doesn’t remember how. He doesn’t remember why. But Mum’s wand lay forgotten by his feet and all he could do was rage and rage and rage against shadows and fear and death embodied in these cruel creatures.

Harry says that she saw him trying to claw their faces off, his hands streaked in black blood, before she scrambled for Mum’s wand and summoned her patronus.

All he remembers was trying to tear Mum’s soul out.

***

When John lands in the right spot, he falls to his knees. The moist earth hugs his knees in cold and dirt.

“…I don’t want to survive anymore,” he confesses.

When he looks up, he finds himself in the cold moors.

The breeding grounds of the dementors, rumours say.

In the distance, beyond the foggy hills, he can see them.

***

They call Harry a prodigy for banishing hundreds of dementors with a weak, barely corporeal patronus. They enroll her in a special program to be a Light Castor as soon as she graduates. They say they’ll pay for her room and board and of course they’ll take care of her brother, of course.

They don’t look at his bloody hands.

***

“Well?” John says to the voice, to the lingering dementors nearby, “Take my soul.”

 

** Part 2: Offering **

What a funny sight he must make. A frail wizard, on the verge of collapsing, dressed in nothing but frayed hospital robes, kneeling in the middle of the moors. He’s like a human sacrifice, dressed up for the shadowy gods to leave the rest of humanity be.

But the gods are greedy.

They come in hordes. They always do. Their flesh-eaten hands become like an ocean of rotting flesh dressed in shadow, clamoring for the first taste. John just closes his eyes, ignores the tugging in his soul.

[ _No_ ,] the voice crunches in his head like crushed insects in broken jars. [ _This one is **m i n e**_ **.]**

The dementors around John suddenly begin to wail and John feels as if his skin has been torn off and resewn on again. Dementors should never scream. They don’t make a sound, per say, but John fears their absent screams the way one fears oblivion in the void.

A strange light tears through the dark curtains of dementors. They writhe in the air like the shadows of scattering centipedes digging for the comfort of the earth. They flee into the dark skies and far off hills, leaving behind only the numb cold of their touch.

“W-wait!” John tries to reach, to ignore the screaming in his head.

The rotting hand that grabs his wrist tells him **_n o._**

When John looks up, he loses all words.

The thing looming before him is a twisted marriage of dark eating light and light eating dark. The last time John saw this dementor, it looked like the others, all flesh-eaten faces with terrible teeth-mouths. But this one the makings of a human face, of corpse-pale skin stitched back against the rotting flesh and black curls all shrouded by the shadow of the dementor’s hood. Are there eyes too? John doesn’t want to know. He can’t help but imagine half formed eyes slowly rolling back into the dementor’s skull.

Its hand feels like the weight of dead intestines. But that doesn’t compare to the hungry, wild light burning in the dementor’s chest. The light pulses around within the dementor, sending flares of burning warmth all around the dementor’s limbs. It jumps wildly like fire, hungry for air. Hungry for John.

“Is that…?”

[ _The other half of your soul?_ ] the voice, the dementor, purrs, bringing John’s hand up to its lips. [ _Why, yes. I should like to devour the rest of it before my kind return._ ]

“…A ha ha…” Is someone laughing? Oh. It’s him. John. “I thought it was a dream… just another dream…”

[ _And what twisted and delightful dreams you invent in your head. But, alas, this exquisite circumstance is not one of the workings of your imagination._ ]

“God, no. M’not nearly brilliant enough to come up with this.”

[ _…Oh?_ ]

John shrugs. “You look terrible. So terrible and yet… beautiful. I could never imagine something like you before I die.”

The dementor pauses.

Its voice thrums in a strange tone. Almost muted. White noise, perhaps. [ _I should like to devour your soul now._ ]

“…Right,” John says softly. He bares his neck like a puppet with no strings.

The dementor lifts John up by the wrist. Its shackled grip digs into his skin as if to steal the warmth from his veins. When John looks up at the dementor’s mouth this time, he sees strange rows of human and alien teeth, pressed together for a kiss.

John smiles.

“Thank you,” he whispers, just as its teeth touch his lips, just as the blazing white light eating the dementor eating the light tries to eat his.

He’ll see Bill soon.

He’ll see Mum.

***

 _Stolen kisses in the bunks—_ “We’re mates for life, John,”— _Harry jumping him to sing Happy Birthday—Mum pointing at a picture of Death at story time and laughing—_ “My darling boy”—

***

[ ** _N o !_** ] the dementor suddenly throws him away and starts clawing at its hood, letting wisps of dark curls weave in and out of the tears. [ ** _W h a t_** _is this **p A i N ?** Why does it **h U r t?** You… you’ve **poisoned** me…_]

“What?!” If anything, John practically served himself on a platter for the dementor. “I didn’t do anything. _You’re_ the one that’s supposed to end me now! Do what you dementors are supposed to do! Eat my soul!”

The string of light starts to weave more tightly around the dementor’s form, like a half woven net. And yet the light moves so fluidly with the dementor that John could imagine it as another extension of the dementor’s being.

[ _...Fascinating,_ ] the dementor stops writhing, [ _I feel…_ ]

“Better?” John cuts in. “Better enough to finish the job?” He points to his lips.

Quite suddenly, the light and the dementor rumble like thunder. [ ** _N o ._** _I will **not**_.]

John gapes at it.

“But…! You have half my soul! You should finish off the rest!”

The dementor doesn’t answer.

“Dementors are _always_ hungry. You _never_ pass off on a free meal, _what is wrong with you?!_ ”

[ _Don’t be arrogant,_ ] the dementor sneers, it’s twisted teeth surprisingly bright. [ _Your taste is still… raw… I should dig through all your memories first… let the taste linger before I finish you off…_ ]

“That…” John’s stomach turns, “is bullshit. Dementors don’t let taste _linger_ , they’ll snatch it up. They never _savor_ any tastes, otherwise… otherwise…”

He thinks of Bill and Mum and wishes he had been in their place instead. The dementor before him gives a strange shiver.

“Never mind,” John snaps, turning away. There are still thousands of dementors in the moors, all hovering in the next hills, waiting. He’ll just walk up to them and—

Cold hands yank John back, trap him in a shadow-eating-light-eating-shadow embrace.

[ _Where are you going_ ,] the dementor sounds as cold as it feels.

“You know where,” John snaps. “Now let me go.” _Or kill me_ , he thinks. Either route would give him the ending he deserves.

John suddenly sees himself being tarnished by rotting hands, being divided into thousands of shadowy teeth and something not-him bellows [ _no_.]

[ _You belong to me_ ,] the dementor curls its form around him until all John sees and tastes are shadow eating light and light eating shadow.

[ _I tasted your soul first._ ] John tries to move, but his hands get entangled in shadowy flesh. [ _I will finish it when I decide to._ ] Move, John, move. [ _No other will touch you._ ]

He’s smothered in shadows.

***

“…Get away… no… please…”

A rustle. A poke in the shoulders.

“…John?” Another poke. “John! Wake up!”

Shadows and hands grabbing everywhere, dragging her away, Mum…!

“John!”

He pushes the dementors away, blinking viciously when he spots nothing there at all. Just the dorm. Just blankets tangled up in his limbs. And…

“Oh god, I’m so sorry, Bill!”

“Ow…” Bill rubs his back and grins, “you’ve got one mean punch, John Watson. I can see why you’re the dueling champion.”

“Ha, ha,” John mutters. “It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. What are you doing here?”

Bill crosses his arms. “What are _you_ doing here? It’s too late to be sleeping. Every time I see you, you’re either dueling till you collapse or sleeping till you die. If I wasn’t sleeping with you, I’d swear you were a vampire.”

“ _Bill_. We’ve been over this.”

A sigh. “Fine, fine… I just came up to give you some post that you missed at breakfast.”

John tenses under the sheets. “Oh.”

“It’s from your sister,” Bill says brightly. “Just like all of your letters.”

John closes his eyes.

“Right. Well. I’ll just leave it by your bag then. _Try_ reading it this time? I think she means well.”

“For someone who yells at me every time we floo, I doubt that.”

Bill laughs and pokes him on the nose. “ _You_ probably don’t help, grumpy arse. Maybe if you didn’t interrupt every sentence she says, you’d be the charmer I know you are.”

Snort. “Only for _you_ ,” John says softly, bringing their faces together…

***

John wakes up reaching for a love long gone.

The dementor sits, curled around him, in front of a small fire. From the flicker of flame and light-eating-shadow-eating-light, John guesses they’re in some sort of abandoned castle that’s been slowly consumed by moss.

For a while, John sits, numb and lost on what to do. The dementor’s arms flicker like wisps of nothing in one moment, and the coldest hearse in the next. It doesn’t seem to be looking at him. One of its arms curves over John’s waist tightly while the other hand holds up a familiar book.

If they sit for long enough, John will start thinking that the castle’s moans will talk back.

“…You had no right to look at that memory,” John says softly.

[ _You and I are connected in ways that no living being has ever been before. Such things are inevitable. I never understood why some humans hold certain memories higher than others but when I look into the flavour of your soul… the ones with Bill seem especially delicious._ ]

“Bill is off limits!” John hisses. Bill is everything that John wishes he could have been. Bill is everything John wishes never happened.

The dementor stills. [ _You felt… intensely… when you were with him. You were… more alive. Interesting. I’ve never considered that some humans are ‘more’ or ‘less’ alive beyond the literal meaning. I wonder what you tasted like back then…_ ]

“Are you even listening to me?! God, you must love the sound of your own voice…”

[ _Impossible for me to,_ ] the tone from the dementor sounds so discordant that John winces.

“Like I believe that—”

[ _I do not possess a physical voice,_ ] the dementor interrupts, its cloak wisps up in frenzied shadow, [ _this line of communication is only possible because of your soul, though I do find it curious that other humans have tried to communicate with my kind before using oral language. That is rather… daring for them. My kind do not communicate in that manner. It is limited. Difficult to articulate complex thoughts._ ]

And yet apparently this dementor is the chatty type.

Despite himself, John leans in with interest. “If that’s true, then how are you articulating things in English to me? I’m guessing dementors think in emotions…?”

[ _Correct. My kind are ruled by instinct. The base drive to consume. To gather together. Human articulation has a clumsy nature to it. I have my theories about why I’m able to navigate through this language somewhat fluently with you but there’s no way to know without experimenting with a large number of samples._ ]

“Huh. That’s amazing, actually.”

[ _…Do you know that you do say that out loud?_ ]

“Sorry,” John says, then mentally berates himself for apologizing to a soul-sucking dementor of all things. Numbly, he wonders the point of caring when he should be finding a monster willing to kill him.

[ _No, no need to refrain from your normal behavior. I find it… intriguing,_ ] the dementor says slowly, as if to taste the syllables.

“Then maybe you should eat me.”

The dementor immediately bristles, shadow and light splattering around the walls like live electricity.

“Fine then. Starve, you shoddy Dementor,” John closes his eyes. He can wait. The dementor has to get hungry eventually… and it can’t watch him forever. If it tries to consume other souls, John will stop it. With what wand, well, John can improvise.

[ _…Sherlock._ ]

“…Sorry, what?”

[ _Humans assign significant objects and beings names when they interact, correct? So they can distinguish that object or being from others of the same nature. For that purpose, you may call me Sherlock._ ]

John can’t help it. He bursts out laughing. He should be angrier, he knows. Maybe even scared. But he stopped feeling much of anything after Bill died.

The dementor bristles. [ _Is that name inappropriate?_ ]

“No, no, not at all, just… where did you even _get_ that from?”

[ _The book you had was an enlightening read_ ,] the dementor lifts up the research journal that John recognizes from his dream. Not-dream. Doctor Thompson must have put it in his pocket. [ _Have you read it?_ ]

John shakes his head, reaching over to touch the cover.

On the first page, it reads, ‘the personal journal of Sherlock Holmes, 1792.’

 

** Part 3: Falling **

_January 9_ _ th _ _, 1792_

_-This journal will be used to chronicle the behavior and habits of a creature commonly coined as a ‘dementor.’ Silly word, really. When I hear it, I think of the ‘demented’ or ‘demons’ (a creature that doesn’t exist. Honestly, the magical community hold on to such strange superstitions regarding the afterlife.) Indeed, the word ‘dementor’ was coined from the Latin adjective, ‘dēmēns’, which means ‘concerning/out-of the mind.’_

_-Considering the state of dementor’s victims after prolonged exposure, perhaps this is a fitting term after all._

_-S.H._

_***_

John sleeps a lot. Too much, really. But it passes the time. Not much to do besides peek at entries in S.H.’s journal and wake up to the dementor holding him prisoner.

[ _Not prisoner. Safe,_ ] the dementor says, brushing dirt away from John’s lips.

“Not safe from you, though,” John whispers.

The fire flickers upwards, lighting up the dementor’s stitched up skin.

[ _Considering that I am the only obstacle between your desire for oblivion, I would argue the opposite._ ]

John scowls. “What happened to wanting to ‘savor my taste’?”

The dementor turns away. From this angle, it almost looks like it’s scowling.

[ _What happened to calling me ‘Sherlock’?_ ]

“You haven’t tried to look at my memories lately,” John says instead. “What? Not tasty enough for you anymore?”

The dementor rises up so quickly that even the fire seems afraid.

Its hands lash out and John holds his breath, waiting for them to wrap around his throat, to dig at his skin and dangle him up as its prey except—

Those hands only stroke the corner of John’s eyes, they flutter down to his lips in a thoughtful pause.

[… _You are always delectable to me. Unbearably so. But… I would rather wait for you to give them to me._ ]

John’s breath trembles, trapped in a hush.

“I already have. I do. I _will_.”

For a moment, from the twisted turn of it’s horrible lips, the dementor seems almost… disappointed.

[ _No,_ ] it replies, in a tone that digs agonizingly into John’s heart, [ _no, I’m afraid you haven’t yet._ ]

***

_January 13_ _ th _ _, 1792_

_-Where do dementors originate from? Some speculate that these creatures spawn spontaneously in the moors, that they are beings merely born from fog and cold, from any places of brutal climate. Egyptian wizarding philosophers have speculated that dementors are born from the heat and hate of lonely sand while Thai mages have proposed the dead dread of the lonely sea._

_-Dementors are born from our fears and our dread, they say. Dementors are born from our loneliness. Dementors are demons that hid before God locked all the evil up in hell. Dementors are merely the next predator on the food chain for magical kind._

_-All of these statements thrown around but not completely verified by experimentation or science. Predators? I’ve yet to find any predator (magical or not) that behaves as dementors do. The dementor that I trapped in isolation has yet to produce excrement or show any signs of starvation after nearly two weeks of captivity. And yet it seems to crave the contact of human beings (for consumption, no doubt) and others of its kind._

_-A desire to be social, perhaps?_

_-(Mycroft, I can tell that you’re scowling right now and I have four words for you: jump off a cliff.)_

_-S.H._

In the margins, a badly drawn man with an umbrella is seen walking to a guillotine and getting his head chopped off. Despite himself, John laughs.

The dementor spends the rest of the night staring at John as if deciding whether or not to eat him.

(It doesn’t. More’s the pity.)

***

John jolts up when the dementor throws a bunch of deformed apples at him. Blinking the sting of sleep away, John frowns when he looks at the crumpled apple. Its shape is as twisted as a child’s attempt to model clay, like it will reach out and bite whoever tries to eat it.

“What’s this for then?”

[ _To eat,_ ] the dementor says monotonously. [ _It won’t do to have you collapse out of hunger._ ]

“Oh…” John doesn’t remember how long he’s been out here with the dementor. He didn’t even notice the dementor venturing out to find him food as he slept. Has it been a week? Three? When will the dementor bore of him?

[ _I forget that humans must consume things to continue functioning._ ]

John puts the apple down. “Right,” he thinks of S.H.’s journal. “But, you must feel _hunger_ at least?”

[ _I do. Hunger is my kind’s constant companion. We feel it but it’s as typical as a heart beating is for humans._ ]

How strange. John supposes that dementors must have numbed their hunger impulses the way that a starving person must, when they scavenge for food and push themselves to keep scavenging to survive.

[ _Eat_.] The dementor picks the apple back up and pushes it against John’s lips.

For a minute, John considers refusing. This, too, is also a form of death.

But the dementor scowls, its lips coming apart like the glazed lips of a dragon, and says, [ _Eat. I should like to feel the sensation of human taste from your memories_.]

John looks up at the dementor in disbelief. “My memories of _taste?_ Really? You _know_ what taste is like.”

[… _Of souls… yes. Of apples on human tongues? No._ ]

John considers the apple before him, its bumpy and slithering shape and dull colour. Maybe him and this apple are the same.

“What do souls taste like then?” John whispers. A question for a question.

The dementor lowers the apple.

[ _Addiction_ ,] it replies, [ _and the sin of never being full._ ]

It doesn’t mention that John’s soul seems to have a special taste to it. It doesn’t say anything more that night.

The apples taste like sand and bitterness.

***

_January 29_ _ th _ _, 1792_

_-Have tried feeding the dementor different kinds of fruit and something brilliant happened! As soon as any fruit touches a dementor’s hand, its shape becomes twisted and bizarre. I’d describe the shapes as random thoughts of chaos. Like snowflakes, they never look the same. Some are bumpy with spikes that dip into strange grooves. Others look like crystallized explosions in mid-blast. I taste-tested each fruit (shut up Mycroft, it’s for science) and they share the same taste of grit and distaste._

_-Fascinating, truly fascinating… I must try this with other types of plants and flora…_

_-On the other note, have tried to read jokes to the dementor to see if it has a sense of humour. It clearly understands me (it followed instructions when I told it that I would let it have my soul if it spun around the room three times. Obviously, I lied and I believed it was very put out from its shaking hands.) The dementor did not respond. I am unsure if this is merely a problem with the individual dementor or if all dementors share this trait._

_-Have also decided to designate this dementor as Subject M_

_-(Yes, Mycroft, I know that ‘A’ is the first letter of the alphabet, I’m not an idiot. ‘M’ sounds much more interesting. It stands for ‘murder’, in other words, ‘murdering annoying brothers named Mycroft.’_ )

-S.H.

This time, when John laughs, the dementor makes a rasping sound to accompany it. The rasps sound like the rattle of snakes before they pounce, or the wail of rodents before they die.

John stares at it in disbelief. “What in the world was that?”

The dementor shuffles its hold around John’s waist.

[… _I wanted to see if I could mimic human sound._ ]

“What. So. That was… your attempt at a laugh?”

The dementor bristles. [ _I do not understand the purpose of laughing. Why create such noises to convey humour?_ ]

“…I’m not sure. It just… happens.”

The dementor tightens its hold on John. [ _Explain._ ]

He shakes his head.

“How can I explain a laugh to you? It just… is.” He thinks of playing hide and seek with Harry, of surprising Mum with paper tissue flowers, and being ambushed by Bill in a tickle fight. “It’s like… joy and absurdity bubbling up in your throat until you just have to let it out. It’s like… a grin so wide that it can’t be contained in a grin anymore, it just… becomes music, I suppose. The type of music that becomes funnier the more people join in. A reminder that life can be fun.”

[ _I see._ ] The dementor leans back and suddenly gives that sharp rattle again.

“Wait, why are you trying to laugh again?!”

[ _You laughed by yourself and laughter is meant to be shared, correct?_ ]

For a moment, John wonders if he’s fallen into a mirror version of his dementor. “Uh… yes?”

[ _Then I will laugh with you and you will be more content to stay._ ]

“Oh.” John turns away, feeling something heavy settle in his throat. “I… I haven’t laughed… in a long time.”

The dementor rattle-laughs again, brushing its cold hands against John’s cheek. [ _All the more reason to try again._ ]

And John, well, like someone relearning a lost native tongue, finds himself piecing together something like a smile.

***

[ _Would you tell me a story?_ ] the dementor asks, the light within its chest oddly bright.

John, blinking away the darkness of his thoughts, asks, “Sorry, what?”

The dementor pokes him hard in the shoulder. [ _Tell me a story_.]

“What are you, five?” John snaps.

[ _Dementors do not remember their age. I am merely curious. I wish to know more about you without diving into your memories by force_.]

True enough. The last memory John felt the dementor crawl through was the one with Bill… and that was… weeks? Days? Ago? He spent so much of that time sleeping and munching on deformed apples, reading entries in the journal and suffocating in the dementor’s hold…

“What do you want to know?”

[ _What kind of human would you fall for, John Watson?_ ]

John almost chokes in response. “Um. _What_?!”

[ _That is what I asked._ ]

“I just… Are you trying to learn human mating habits or something?” It sounds like something his dementor might say. “If you are, I’m not the greatest example, human mating—”

[ _I’m not an idiot, John,_ ] the dementor practically grumbles, [ _I know that humans do not always mate for the purposes of conception. I do not want to know about those instincts. I want to know about you. What kind of human entices you? Why? What characteristics are most desirable? Are they like hunger to you? Do they taste as exquisite as the feeling of love in your memories?_ ]

John didn’t think it was possible to spontaneously stop breathing from words alone.

“…You can’t just ask people that…” he stutters.

The dementor leans in until the top of its hood brushes up against John’s forehead. If John looked up, he might be able to see if it has eyes behind those shadows, but John can’t help but look at the dementor’s lips, gleaming sharply in the light.

[… _Why not?_ ]

“I… I...” his hands tangle against the dementor’s cloak, “I just…”

 _It’s private_ , he wants to say. _It’s so precious,_ all those passing memories of Bill being slowly eroded by time and his faulty human brain. If he gives them voice, if he tries to tell them as a story, they might dissolve into another form. Something he can’t recognize anymore.

“No.”

The dementor stiffens. [ _I’ve offended you_.]

“No.” John pauses. “Well. Yes. I mean. What does it matter, I’m stuck here until you get bored of me and then I can—”

[ _It matters,_ ] the dementor leans so close that John can feel its cold fog-breath reaching out to his. [ _because I want you to last. I want this taste of John Watson’s soul to last for eternity. And I cannot do that by devouring you… I want… I want to know you instead._ ]

Not for the first time, John pushes the dementor away. But this time, the dementor lets him.

“That… That’s not fair…! I’m not… I’m not going to be your little snack of memories. They’re _mine_. You won’t even tell me anything about yourself, how can you expect me to just confess all my sins to you? All my loves?” Mum and Bill and Harry and all the hate that slipped in there too, “What about you? Who are you? Do dementors even know that? Or do you steal your stories from the souls you devour every day? _Tell me!_ ”

The dementor falls so silent that it could disappear into the fog and John would know no difference.

Then, it speaks.

[ _I do not remember where I came from. When I think of my first memories, all I remember are screams. I sometimes think they are my own, though, as you know, dementors are not good at screaming or laughing._ ]

John shudders at the thought.

[ _My parents were hunger and shadow. My kind were all I knew. Devour. Devour. Devour. Fill the void…. And I did._ ]

Slowly, John sits back down by the dementor.

[ _Do you know what that’s like? Time is nothing to me. I feel as if my birth occurred only yesterday. Only souls help me mark my memories. And yet I barely remember the wisps of souls that I devoured. I only knew the height of satisfaction before it was ripped away from me and I hungered once again… Every once in a while, I would remember shades of life in my being, the lingering wisps of a lost love, the dying sounds of a last argument, the human determination to cling to life even if they don’t wish to… They fade so quickly. How can I let that happen to you, John Watson, when your memories shine with such warmth and pain? How can I let you fade into nothing? Into the thing that is me?_ ]

John trembles so much that the stones could become part of his skin.

“…I’m the reason Mum’s gone. Bill too. It’s my fault. How can you think that I’m… _warm_ or… or… _special_ … when I’ve done such terrible things, I’m _nothing_ , I’m just John Watson and I’m _Nothing!_ ”

[ _Shh, shhh_...]

Lukewarm hands pull John’s away from his hair and wrap themselves around him. He feels a cool sensation against his head. Monstrous lips touching human skin.

[ _You, John Watson, are a wonder. A survivor. You paint your mother’s memory so vibrantly, she makes any audience tremble from awe. You love your sister so much that you pushed her away and yet you resent her. You loved Bill so much that he died, thinking of you. You’ve survived. Through all that grief and doubt and self-hatred… you’ve survived. Your presence, however imperfect, is a gift_.]

John chokes and chokes until he realizes that he’s crying. _Oh_ , he sobs loudly against his dementor’s chest, _I thought I couldn’t cry anymore._

***

_February 9_ _ th _ _, 1792_

_-I have the most wonderful and (according to Mycroft) maddening theory. But after the recent Walking Corpse cases, where recent victims of dementor attacks have vanished, all of them, I think this may be the answer._

_-(No, I refuse to believe that “zombies” are involved. How muggle of you, Mycroft. If anything, inferi would be the more likely culprits but did you feel any dark magic at the morgue, Mycroft? I rest my case.)_

_-Dementors used to be human beings._

_-(Shut up, Mycroft.)_

_-Think about it. Where do the bodies left behind from Dementor attacks disappear to? Why do morticians always report the bodies missing or burned? What if the dementor victims that haven’t been killed mercifully eventually… wander off? What if they become the thing that took their souls away?_

_-Imagine it. Husks that are neither living or dead… slowly longing for what’s missing. Souls. They hunger for their missing piece so much that they devour other souls, spawn more of their kind. It explains the rising dementor numbers over the past few centuries. Of course, bodies that are watched by family members eventually die on their own… but alone, isolated, forgotten, **those** bodies become dementors. I know it._

_-Now if I could just prove this theory… perhaps by working more closely with subject M… Imagine what we could do if we could reverse this process. Can dementors become human again? Is it possible to when they have no soul?_

_-(NB: must find out **why** there have been so many cases of dementor attacks recently… Is society developing more of a stench the more we fear them? I wouldn’t be surprised if a hundred years from now we deal with an oversaturation of them until no magical human souls are left...)_

_-S.H._

“...You were human once?”

The dementor nearly drops the journal against John’s lap, drifting away from him towards the fire. John shivers in its absence.

“Well?” John brings his arms up warm himself.

Quickly, the dementor returns, wrapping itself around John’s form. Lately, its skin has lost its odd white tinge. Its lips, too, seem more relaxed than before. Not quite as rigid like an old stitched wound. John closes his eyes.

[... _I do not remember much beyond my first hunger,_ ] the dementor admits, soft breaths caressing John’s ear, [ _but I have sudden inferences, as you know… I understand your language so easily… yet I still do not understand your emotions. I have no heartbeat, no biological functions…. How could I have been human when I am not even considered alive?_ ]

Maybe John’s imagining it… but there’s something, maybe, sad… in the way the dementor says this. Maybe even bitter.

John quietly takes the dementor’s hand and presses it against his own. They mirror each other. Four fingers. One thumb. A palm. John’s hand has become so cold that he finds the dementor’s quite warm.

“...Being ‘human’... ‘humane’... That’s such a vague concept. Humans get into stupid fights about morality all the time… but, the way I see it, you’re human if you care. You’re human if you give a shit about something and you’re not purposefully trying to be a dick. You’re human if you try to change. Humanity is such a cesspool of shit and terror but… the scary,” _wonderful,_ he thinks, “thing is that we can _change_ , if we want. For the better.”

The dementor shudders into something like a sigh but before it can protest, John intertwines their fingers together, marvels at how they fit.

“You… you’re keeping me alive. I kind of hate you for it sometimes. But I also don’t now. And I think… I think that’s one of the most human things you’ve done for anyone before. So…” John presses the dementor’s knuckles against his lips, “you might have been human once.”

He wonders if S.H. ever found out that Dementors can cry too. They cry trails of frost into the night and insist they can’t.

***

[ _I should like to be referred to as ‘he’ and ‘him’ now instead of ‘it.’_ ]

John can’t even be offended anymore. “You can read my mind?”

[ _You think quite loudly_.]

John supposes, with only the journal and the dementor for company, that makes sense.

“Since when do you want to be called ‘he’? Do dementors even have gender? Um. No offense.”

If the dementor could roll its ( _his_ , damn it) eyes (does it- _he_ even have eyes?), it- _he_ probably would.

[ _No. But humans do. I should…  like to see if S.H.’s theory is true. Besides, is gender not a constructed narrative in human society?_ ]

“True enough,” John laughs.

[ _Then, I prefer the sound of ‘he’,_ ] the dementor preens, [ _it feels like me_.]

John leans back against the dementor. Reimagines the dementor’s voice in his head.

“‘He’ it is, then.”

***

_February 11th, 1792_

_-Do Dementors even have a concept of self?_

_-Nothing I try seems to stimulate a response out of subject M. Well, nothing safe. I wonder, too often, if it’s possible to survive a Dementor’s kiss… perhaps that would give me a clue to understanding this theory…_

_-S.H._

***

[ _Your sister… you think of her often._ ]

John’s eyes flutter open to the familiar fireplace and cold castle steps, to his dementor curled around him like a lover. Tonight, the odd mix of light and dark matches the fire’s intensity in his dementor. Such a dreamlike, impossible sight.

“...Of course I do. She’s my sister.”

The dementor scowls. [ _I do not often think of my Kind in the same regard as you do for her._ ]

“Well…”

John struggles to find the words. He’s been having trouble with words lately. How to describe laughs? Love? Humanity? Harry needs a whole new language to breathe life to her.

“She’s annoying.” That’s certainly true. “Bossy.” She always has to be right. “Constantly telling me to owl her back.” John never does.

 _You’re my only family now,_ Harry yanked him by the ear when she could, _at least **try** to say hello. Send me back blank parchment if you have to!_

His heart aches.

“...She joined up with the Light Brigade, you know… Reinforces the shields around London. She’s an amazingly powerful witch.” Unlike John, who can’t even manage a proper patronus. He curls up his fists. “I was always jealous of her.”

[ _Jealous…_ ]

John thinks about joining the auror division, just to watch Harry’s face pale.

“...Not quite,” John admits. “It’s complicated. I just…” His life has always been pre-Kiss and post-Kiss. Every kiss killed someone he loved. Mum. Bill. And now him. He should be dead too. “Harry _had_ to enlist, I know it. How can an eleven year old be expected to take care of her kid brother? I’m so stupid… I hated that she sent letters and yet I kept every single damn one and I couldn’t even write back a nice _how are you_. I wanted… I wanted her to scream at me. Blame me. _I killed our mother_ , damn it, why couldn’t she resent me?”

Quiet. So quiet. It hurts to look at the fire’s sharp light. All he can see is his mother’s husk, burning without a scream, as all husks do.

[... _Is that why you want to die?_ ] the dementor asks cautiously, carefully, as if the syllables themselves will make John break.

John can’t even answer. Everything seems made of glass shards and tears. His hands shake as if burned by the weight of them.

[ _Oh John,_ ] the dementor cradles his hands in his own, holds them to his half of John’s soul, [ _I would take all the pain away if I could._ ]

John half-laughs, half-sobs, “I thought my pain was supposed to be delicious. Something about my nightmares being exquisite?”

The dementor almost trembles with all the light twisting around its limbs. [ _I would rather you be happy. I prefer it, actually._ ]

“Oh,” John ducks his head, trying to calm his beating heart. “...Thank you.”

[... _I would let you go, you know, if I didn’t think you would run off to be Kissed by another of my Kind. I would let you go if that would make you happy._ ]

“...How do you know death wouldn’t make me happy?” John whispers back.

[ _I think I died once,_ ] the dementor ghosts its lips across John’s cheek, [ _look at me now._ ]

***

_February 13th, 1792_

_-Society may be afraid of what happens when you step into the moors… but I am not._

_-(Don’t try to stop me, Mycroft.)_

_-S.H._

_***_

_June 16th, 1805_

_-To those curious about the whereabouts of my brother (likely using this journal as a resource to study the creatures known as dementors), he did indeed venture into the moors. I haven’t heard from him since. Take that as the warning you deserve._

_-M.H._

 

** Part 4: Patronus **

_You’re not a monster,_ John wants to say to him but he’d be lying. His dementor has devoured other souls. If John’s right, his dementor has probably devoured _Bill’s_ soul once (“ _You loved Bill so much that he died, thinking of you.”_ ) How can he even stand being near the thing that took Bill away?

And yet, John can’t help thinking, _you’re beautiful and extraordinary_ to the very being he wants to kill him. John can’t help but be content in his embrace for the rest of eternity. He could sleep forever like this and it’d be like dying.

His dementor stiffens, [ _No_.]

John frowns, “What’s wrong?”

[ _Do not think like that._ ]

“...Like what?”

[ _Do not think that being with me is like dying!_ ] his dementor roars in John’s mind.

“But—”

[ _You have to live, John Watson. Your life is so precious, not because of your taste, but_ _—_ ]

Light, burning hotter than the sun, crashes between them both. His dementor actually howls, a _real howl_ , wrenching away from John while the little bit of soul within his dementor flickers just as the light separating John and his dementor growls.

The light pounces up, prowling around John protectively, hissing as his dementor draws near.

“H-Harry?” John winces at the lioness patronus. She nudges him with a firm lick and returns to hissing at his dementor. “Wait! Stop! He’s a friend!”

The dementor and patronus stare at John incredulously. Harry’s patronuses always seem to have minds of their own.

[ _I am a being that could end your existence,_ ] his dementor deadpans.

Harry’s patronus seems to agree because she opens her mouth and growls.

“None of that now,” John wobbles as he stands, arms stretched between the patronus and his dementor. “Honestly, he’s the only reason I’m alive. I’d be dead if he didn’t refuse to eat me.”

The patronus stares at him for so long that John worries that it might run out of magic and disappear ( _but that’s what you want, John, isn’t it? To be alone with this monster forever?_ Shutupshutupshutup—)

[[John Hamish Watson,]] he hears instead, and for a moment, he thinks his mum is there, [[I don’t know where the hell you are but you better be alive and with your soul intact. As soon as you get this message, you apparate home, you son of a bitch, or I’ll resurrect you as an inferi and keep you chained to my house!]]

Then—

[[John, John, _please_ , I don’t care where you are, _please be alright,_ just come home already, you stubborn loon!]]

Then—

[[...(a choked sob) I just want my brother back.]]

John’s eyes widen. “Harry—”

The lioness only closes her eyes, glares at the dementor one more time, before it vanishes.

(He forgot that patronuses carry the voices of their owners, their messages. He forgot so much.)

“...She’s gone,” John falls to his knees. Numb again.

[ _She’ll be back_.] His dementor sounds strange. Oddly muted.

“No, she won’t,” John shivers, “not when she knows I’m friends with you,” he’s such a fuck-up, “that I’ve spent god-knows-how-long here.”

[ _She’ll be back because she loves you…_ ] his dementor lies because how can anyone love someone like John? [... _and you were right… being with me is like dying_.]

John shakes his head, “I didn’t mean—”

[ _Just look at us!_ ] The dementor points wildly at the dim string of light connecting their chests together. Twisted and frayed, barely visible in the firelight, it touches the muted half of John’s soul and grows brighter as it travels to his dementor’s chest. The other half of John’s soul shines brighter than the firelight as it feeds into his dementor’s being.

For the first time, John notices how deathly pale he’s become compared to his dementor’s tanning hue.

[ _...I’m killing you_ ,] his dementor says.

Those words sound like heartbreak.

***

“...What do you use for your happiest memory?”

“Huh?” Bill blinks up from his doodles, parchment sticking to his cheek. John laughs and wipes it off.

“I _said_ , when you’re doing your patronus… what do you use for your happy memory?”

“Oh!” Bill stretches his arms. “Well. The deep stuff, I suppose. Nothing like winning the Quidditch cup or drinking your first butterbeer, those are like… simple-needs-happiness, if that makes sense? Something deeper works… something tied to a person or a meaning… something like love.”

John feels his mouth go dry.

“...What?” Bill gapes.

“...I just never saw you as the poetic sort..”

“Oh my god, shut up. I didn’t even tell you my memory yet, you bugger. For all you know, I think of Marcie Jones from Third Year.”

John frowns. She’s really pretty. “Do you?”

“And for that comment, I’m not gonna tell you.”

“Oh, come on! One hint! I’ll let you win in duelling, just this once…!”

***

“...I forgot I had that memory,” John blinks slowly.

[ _Do you see now? You’re dying… and I…_ ] his dementor lifts up his not-cold hands, hands that no longer look deathly white or rotting, [ _I’m a different kind of monster now_.]

“No, you’re—”

[ _Perfect? Extraordinary? No. You say that because you’re in love with danger_ —]

***

“—what the HELL were you thinking, John, jumping into a horde of dementors like that, you could have been _kissed_ , you could have been—”

“Well, I wasn’t, was I?” John watches the child he rescued run back to her mother. Their hug feels like knives climbing up John’s throat. “Someone had to do it.”

“Someone with a _patronus_ , you mean. You can barely make mist come out of your wand. You need to stick with your partner or at least tell me before you run off again!”

“I am just as capable as the rest of you at doing my job. I just need to be faster, like I always am, I don’t need a patronus—”

“Merlin, sometimes I think you’re more in love with danger than you are with me. Shut up, Watson, you _know_ it’s true. Now get your arse up and follow me St. Mungo’s. No complaints—”

***

[— _not because you have any attachment to me._ ]

“...Are you fucking kidding me?”

His dementor pauses. [ _No, this is not a joke_ —]

“I admit, I’m suicidal as hell. I don’t want to get up in the mornings. Sometimes, I wish I could just choke in my sleep. It was easier when I had Bill. He made me want to be better. And then he was gone. And it was _my fault_. Just like with mum—

“And I fought and I fought, and I kept fighting in stupid wars over petty wizarding politics until I couldn’t fight anymore and I felt _nothing_. It was just something to do to pass the time—

“But you? You just storm in, take my life in your stupid lips and you don’t even have the balls to _take it away_. You just, you hold me here every night and you keep me alive. One minute, you tell me I’m being saved up for your snack and the next minute you say I’m a precious existence! Which is it?! Do you know how infuriating you are?—

“But I like it, because I’m an idiot, and even though I’m suicidal as hell and I would be better off dead, you make me feel _safe_ , and, damn it—

“—You’re not dangerous at all. Not to me.”

His dementor lets out a strangled shudder. [ _You don’t know what you do to me_.]

“...I’d be happy to find out,” John whispers.

His dementor’s lips curl up enough for a hint of a smile, jagged and wrong. [ _No, you wouldn’t. Do you care that your soul is being drained the longer you stay with me? No, don’t answer that. I know the answer. I can see why humans like to voice the obvious to themselves…_ ]

“Sherlock—”

[ _That’s the first time you’ve ever called me by that name, you know. Am I human enough for you now?_ ]

John wants to punch himself. “Yes! Of course you are! You’re the most human—”

[ _And I suppose you won’t mind becoming a dementor in exchange then_ —]

John freezes.

[— _because that’s what will happen. A rather equivalent exchange, don’t you think? The monster stealing your soul slowly so it can become human, trapping you in the hell it once lived. No. I cannot accept that._ ]

“A dementor…”

He can’t picture it. He can’t picture waking up with nothing but hunger, preying on other people’s Mums, other people’s Bills, other people’s sisters. Do those souls ever come back the way Sherlock is now? Are they even the same after that?

“...I can’t,” he shakes.

Quietly Sherlock places a wand in John’s hands. [ _I know. You wouldn’t be John if you didn’t care about others before yourself._ ]

John nearly drops the wand. “Where did you get this?”

[ _Same pocket where I found S.H.’s journal._ ]

“And you didn’t tell me?!”

[ _You would have left._ ]

John snorts. “With what magic? I can’t conjure a patronus.”

Sherlock brings John’s hands up to his cheek. No longer cold or dead. [ _Yes, you can. You must. Think of something happy_.]

“No. I can’t do that to you. I can’t—”

[ _You must! You need to cast a patronus on me to regain your soul. Did you see what happened when your sister’s patronus touched me? Some of your soul flickered in me. I believe it tried to come back._ ]

“But then _you’ll_ be an ordinary dementor again. You won’t be you. You won’t be Sherlock, and I…!”

Fingers press against John’s lips. Sherlock comes so close to John that he can see into the darkness of Sherlock’s hood. His dementor has eyes after all. Dark glinting eyes like the surface of undiscovered planets. He comes so close that their lips would touch, if not for Sherlock’s hand pressing between them.

[... _I love you_.]

John almost stops breathing.

[ _I may not understand human emotions anymore, but I understand this… I love you. I love you the way darkness loves light’s painful touch, always reaching to embrace it. I love you the way shadows dance in the sunlight, each trying not to snuff the other out. I love you the way time is lost, never to be regained. I want to hold you so close that you will never leave. But…_ ]

John shouldn’t be crying.

[ _I love you so much that I can barely contain it. I want you to keep living. I want you to be the John Watson that I see every day but you cannot do that if you die. If S.H.’s theory is true, then I am a man long dead. I would rather you continue living with the memory of what I am now, instead of the monster I will become again_.]

“No,” John shakes his head. “No, a thousand times, _no_.”

[ _John,_ ] dementors shouldn’t be so gentle, shouldn’t kiss away your tears, [ _I don’t want to be human at the price of your life. I wouldn’t be human then. Not truly. Please. You understand, don’t you?_ ]

He hates that he does.

“Alright,” John tells himself to stand like a soldier. “I’ll do it.”

***

 _Think of something happy,_ they say every time he tries to say the words. _Think of something deep._

But he’s so weak. (“ _Be a man,”_ Da always said before throwing the stunner at him again, _“I’ll toughen you up,”_ Da used to say before Mum stopped him.) He shouldn’t tremble when he hears the dementors. He shouldn’t see his Da every time.

 _I don’t know what ‘happy’ is_ , he’s afraid to say sometimes. _I don’t know when I have it._

And when he does, it’s gone.

***

The fire is out. They stand across from each other, John with his wand hand outstretched and Sherlock drifting like a spectre from a child’s tale. The string of light connecting them wavers in the dark.

[ _Promise me that you’ll apparate back to your sister immediately after you regain your soul. Don’t linger. My Kind will sense my weakness and come for you if you stay._ ]

John just nods.

[ _Please, John, promise me that you’ll apparate to her_.]

“...I... “ he doesn’t want to but if it’s Sherlock’s last wish, “I promise.”

There’s that smile again. Uncanny yet true. Dementors shouldn’t smile either. Their smiles feel like tears in space.

[ _Thank you_.]

John’s hand shakes. He can barely see his wand anymore. Barely speak the words. _Think of something happy._ But what?

Softly, slowly, John suddenly sees himself laughing while his dementor attempts the same. He sees his dementor watching him sleep, a curious sensation bubbling in his heart. He hears himself call his dementor ‘Sherlock’ for the first time and…

“...Are these your memories?” John breathes, lowering his wand.

[ _The best of them. I hope you can use them for the patronus._ ]

No, John wants to say again. It’s not fair. He can’t just use this gift against Sherlock. Not this happiness. Happiness shouldn’t kill. He tries to think of something else. Digs deep. Remembers everything he wanted to forget about Bill and Mum and Harry.

“Y-you asked what kind of human I would fall for, once. Remember?”

[ _Always._ ]

“Well. I’ve always loved brave people. Those who kept going even when everything was hell. You...  Sherlock, my dementor, you’re the bravest being I’ve ever met. _Thank you_.”

He thinks about the words _I love you_ and a simple wish to keep living. He thinks about the way Sherlock holds him like he’s the most cherished person in the universe.

“ _Expecto Patronum_.”

Light falls from his wand, growing brighter and brighter the more John thinks. The patronus swirls into existence, flashing its blinding cloak at dark castle walls, radiant in its glide.

Sherlock starts to laugh.

[ _Only you, John, would have a patronus shaped like a dementor._ ]

John can’t even reply. His dementor-patronus drifts towards him, lifting up a hand to caress his cheek. Then, it moves towards Sherlock, tugging at the string of light connecting John and Sherlock. It tugs and it tugs, taking more of the light away from Sherlock’s chest.

Sherlock’s howls strangle the air.

 _No_ , John almost shouts, but his patronus only nods. It embraces Sherlock, burning away all of the darkness in his cloak. For a moment, John sees the human Sherlock might have been, and then—

[ _If there’s a next life out there, John, I will look for you_ — _!_ ]

The patronus blinds everything in the vicinity, sending light crashing through the moors, brighter than a sunrise.

By the time John regains his sight, Sherlock is gone. The patronus too.

Nothing but cold moors to hug him now.

John falls to his knees and cries.

 

** Part 5: Live **

At first, John doesn’t want to move. He lies there, curled up against the dead firepit. He listens to the eventual return of the other dementors. He contemplates letting it end again.

But he promised.

He forces himself to stand up, ignores the weight of his own body, heavier than all the sins of the earth. He pictures Harry’s flat in his mind, messy and filled with tangled yarn and coffee mugs.

Numbly, he apparates.

He ends up falling on top of Harry’s kitchen table, ruining stacks of reports and drawings. He stares listlessly at the ceiling, not realizing that his sister is staring back.

Her fists are curled. Jaw clenched. Eyes wild. Great. She’s going to blow up and probably throw some cups at the wall. He deserves it.

But Harry doesn’t do that.

She yanks him up by his mangy hospital gown and throws her arms around him. “You _idiot!_ Moron! _Never_ do that again!”

John barely knows what to do. He’s never seen Harry _cry_ before. It’s impossible.

“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?! I looked everywhere for you! I thought you were dead or tortured or stuck in a hole! I sent a patronus every moment I could! I nearly lost my job with all the time I took off! I hate you for that! Where the hell did you go?!”

John trembles in her arms.

Harry stops. “Never mind. Sorry. I just,” she lets go, “ _I thought I lost you_.”

She looks so much like mum, like herself, like both of the strongest women he knows blended into one, that John breaks down.

“ _Harry_ , Harry, _I need help_. I just… _I need so much fucking help_.”

And Harry, bless her, lets him do that.

***

He forgot that it hurt so much to love someone.

***

“I want to die.” He avoids looking at her gasp, avoids her judgment. “I’ve wanted to die since… Hell, since a long time ago. I don’t remember when it started but I always… I always thought I was worthless. That… That it’s my fault Dad left—”

“Dad was a wanker,” Harry hisses.

“ _I know_ , but that’s what I thought. It’s stupid.”

Harry puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not stupid.”

“You’re not listening! It’s my fault Dad left. It’s my fault Mum was kissed. My fault for Bill too. I know you know it. I’m the reason they’re dead or gone or worse! It’s on me!”

“John—”

“—I wake up each day and I think, _I just want to lie here_. I think, _I don’t want to do this anymore_. There’s no point. I want to feel something. _Anything_. But I can’t. You know that last mission? The one where only I survived? That was the last straw. I was so close to being kissed and I couldn’t even die properly. I just, I’m a coward and a failure, Harry. I can’t do this. Can’t get better.”

Pause.

“Are you done?”

John looks down at his knees, at the scattered pages on the floor. Eventually, he nods.

“Good.” Harry comes closer, presses her side against his. “...I’ve been there, you know.”

John jolts back. “What?” No. Not possible. Not Harry. “But…”

She laughs. Hollow. “Yeah. I’m supposed to be perfect, right? The chosen one. The one who can power an entire light barrier for a city by herself. The witch of light and hope. But… god, it was hard, John. Mum just died and I had to put on a strong face for you… but… I just wanted to crawl up and hide. Run away.”

“Harry…”

“I drank a lot. The school had to cover it up, couldn’t let their golden girl’s rep get destroyed. I was awful to Clara. She broke up with me. Left. I almost ended up in a muggle hospital with how much I drank. I sent you so many letters, so I could pretend I was being a responsible sister, but really… I should have just visited you. I was just afraid you’d see the real me and leave.”

John’s throat tenses painfully. “How… how did you get better?”

Harry huffs. “I didn’t, at first. But then you, idiot of idiots, joined the aurors and it was a total surprise out of nowhere! How was I supposed to protect you if you were on the front lines during our wizarding war too?”

“You don’t need to protect me—”

“We’re _family,_ it’s what we do. Annoy and protect each other. Unless you’re our wanker dad.”

He snorts and she elbows him back.

“Anyways, I realized that while I was drunk on my arse I’d missed everything about your life. I had to get sober. So… I got help. I talked to a Mind Healer, went for sessions every week, joined an Alcoholics Witches group, tried to make amends with Clara. With you.”

He tenses. “I’m sorry… I should have answered your letters…”

“ _No,_ ” Harry says fiercely. “Don’t apologize. What you felt then was justified. And after hearing you say all that stuff earlier, I get why you didn’t. It’s okay, John. It’s okay to be _sad_ and break down. It doesn’t make you weak—”

“Harry—”

“—it makes you strong and not-strong and _so human_. And that’s _fine_ , that’s _all fine_. Because you have me and sometimes I’m awful—”

 _You’re not awful,_ John wants to say.

“—but I’ll try for you. So, _please..._ try for me too.”

John stares at her for so long that his throat goes dry.

“Do you… do you really think I can get better?” _That I can be happy?_

Harry’s smile is watery but stubborn like her.

“ _Of course_ , I do. You’re the strongest person I know.”

Someday, John wants to tell Harry about S.H. and Sherlock, about dementors being human and humans becoming dementors. Someday, John wants to sit down with her and knit like she and Clara used to. He wants to sit in for a movie and throw popcorn at her just because he can. He wants to laugh and be there for her as she is for him, right now.

But today he’s allowed to be sad. Allowed to reach out for his big sister’s hand.

They hug, and for a moment, John doesn’t feel numb.

***

***

***

** Coda: Breathe **

This body is difficult to move at times. He finds himself longing for the ease of shadow and flesh, rather than soul and flesh united once again (or at least, the pieces of soul he managed to scrape together from the dark.)

It took a while for him to adjust, to acclimatize himself to the sound of his own breathing, his blood pumping through his veins, his heartbeat. It took longer to accept that these bodily functions come accompanied with breaths of fog and trails of shadow melting from his hair and eyes.

This is as human as he will look to the rest of them.

London shimmers up ahead, a beacon in the night. He reaches the light barrier by dawn, smirking at the intense familiar magic that reminds him of an annoying lioness. Slowly, he brings his hand up to the barrier. It crackles against his newly-acquired flesh, but sure enough, he passes through with jolts of irritation rather than deathly pain.

London streets are much more different than the ones he remembers from over three hundred years ago. More electricity. Shiny automobiles filling his sight. Muggles swarming everything. Wizards and witches patrolling every inch of the barrier.

Speaking of wizards and witches…

“Stop right there!” one shouts at him, pointing their wand. “Where’s your passport? What’s wrong with your face?”

He ignores him, continuing on his way.

“Hey wait! Someone call Harry, we’ve got a weird bloke coming in. He looks cursed. Fog coming out of his mouth and everything…!”

Humans are just as boring as he remembers from his mortal and not-mortal lives.

“What’s the problem?” another voice, the one that he has wanted to hear since he breathed again, asks. “Harry’s on lunch right now. You can just tell me.”

“Oh John! Thank Merlin! Look, it’s that bloke over there, he—John? Are you alright, mate? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

In a sense, John has. He steps forward, hungrily taking in John’s appearance. John looks good. Healthier. More colour in his cheeks. Less grey in his hair. Less frown lines. More spark in his eyes and less of a limp.

“Sherlock,” John breathes his name like a prayer.

Slowly, Sherlock walks towards him and smiles. “John.”

“How…? Why…?”

“It seems your patronus and your soul are two powerful ingredients to a cure, John Watson. Though, I’m rather reluctant to ask you to share your soul with others of my Kind to cure them. I would recommend experimenting with other procedures first.”

“You…” John keeps pointing, “What are you doing here?!”

Sherlock takes John’s hand. It’s warm. So warm. He never delighted in human touch in his first life, but in his second and third, he wants to take it all in forever.

“I said I’d find you in my next life. And I have. And now, I should like to court you, after I reinstate my citizenship.”

John gapes.

Sherlock smirks, pleased to see the blush. “Would you like to go to dinner with me? Not for souls, of course. I don’t believe my new body or yours would enjoy that.”

John could ask for more explanations or arrest him or leave him. John could do anything and Sherlock would be at his mercy.

But John (beautiful, brave, John) only pulls him close and whispers, “Yes. Of course, yes,” and Sherlock breathes a little more.

End

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fanart by the awesome p-chi here: http://youlighttheskyfanfiction.tumblr.com/post/157449635801/p-chi-expecto-patronum-mum-whispers-her-wand

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Death-Crossed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11001909) by [ValdaVermillion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValdaVermillion/pseuds/ValdaVermillion)




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